"Appreciate the Dark and Harness the Light"

Emotions emulate a rollercoaster when it comes to life. I think a better analogy is ocean waves.

The rise of the wave and the barrel over are beautiful spectacles of nature.

Then comes the crash and riptide that are both deadly, chaotic and loud… But depending on your perspective, that too can be beautiful.

The contrast of the white sea foam against the refraction of deep blue green light created by the wave (well depending how clean of a coastline you're on😂) can be breathtaking.

And thats kind of the point I am trying to get at.

If you can shift your perspective you can make anything beautiful.

Dark times have happened to all of us I’m sure. Some are more dark than others. Some are self inflicted. Some of the worst are inflicted by the ones we love.

I have been down that dark path for long stretches growing up. For a long time I did not enjoy life. No amount of alcohol could drown out the darkness I felt in my heart. Darkness began to seep out of me like a wounded tree getting sap on others and ruining their day.

Finally things got to a point where life had to sit me down for a while. I could no longer manage it in a safe, healthy or peaceful way. To be honest there was no other way beside death that could slow the chaos, the crash, that I had become.

And I now thank God for that time out. It put me in the darkest place I could imagine ending up. Ripped me out of self destruction, ripped away my freedom that I was irresponsible with, and cut off the poison that I kept drowning myself in. Life sent me where most monsters end up. Thats exactly where the change I needed appeared.

I call that moment of life “The Riptide”. I was fighting the wave of life I realized. When that riptide came I was emotionally, mentally and almost physically out of energy. I let go. As I let the tide take me, I looked up from under the typhoon I created. Time to pay the price, and underneath that water, accountability weighed on top of me. There was no way out.

I accepted what was happening, and as I accepted the accountability I began to feel something unfamiliar… buoyancy. Sitting amongst the monsters I realized that these monsters were just men. Men who got trapped in a time of when they were hurt. Men who at the core had humanity and, the pain the world bestowed on them detached from that. I saw men who didn't understand how to look in the mirror and see the hurt child they had become. These aren’t monsters… these are humans with broken hearts and broken minds.

I quickly realized that it was time to let the tide take me back into its ocean. The mission was to learn how life moves, and to understand how my mind works.

Our behaviors act as catalysts in this ocean. Pressures, wind gusts, and temperatures that all affect this ocean of life. The epiphany hit me and shifted my perspective in an instant. In my darkest of places underneath the waves, my eyes opened and saw the beauty of it all. The wave, the barrel over, the crash and the riptide.

In that eye opening event I developed appreciation for the Darkness. Without the Darkness I would have never been able to see this beautiful Light that pierced through it. Answers of God began to permeate in a way I never saw before.

Simple and profound, I began the journey of mastering my emotions and understanding my thinking. Psychology became my food. My behavior was my focus. My reactions turned into chess pieces. Little by little I began to float to the surface. As I continued to work on myself I could feel the currents calming. I was in a rhythm with nature.

Nowadays, I am finally breathing at the surface. I work constantly on the things I learned in the Darkness. It keeps me afloat and keeps breath in my lungs. The waves of my life are no longer violently crashing and I have found peace in the sound that they create. I understand that I have ’t mastered everything about myself, that I am just at the surface. I am so grateful to be there.

Endless possibilities await and I am still at sea. Each day I try to become better in increments. Those little actions will build my vessel and I know one day that I will be sailing. With the new appreciation for my Darkness, I know that I will be able to harness the light of the stars to guide me on my quests

“Appreciate the Dark and Harness the Light”.

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